The Bronze Age Architecture of Tavşan Adası in Its Aegean Context

The interaction between the Aegean and Asia Minor during the Bronze Age is an area of research with considerable potential. So far, the Early and Middle Bronze Age as well as the beginning of the Late Bronze Age of Caria and Ionia – the southern Aegean coast of Turkey – have been researched insufficiently.
Questions concerning the so-called Minoanization and the interexchange of knowledge and technologies could and should be answered by results of present and future excavations. The same applies to questions regarding the Aegean trading and communication network.
Different concepts, theses and approaches concerning the Aegean Bronze Age have been developed and discussed in recent decades in order to investigate how the southern East Aegean was integrated into the transmaritime communication network.
The project will address some general questions, for example the term Minoanization and its notions in the archaeological research. What motivated the expansion and development of the southern East Aegean? How were the political, commercial and military reasons intertwined? Was it only a matter of an interexchange of communication by means of passing on knowledge, culture and technologies? Was there an interexchange of whole groups of people or of experts such as craftsmen and merchants?
The processes of assimilation and acculturation will be analysed on the island Tavşan Adası, a small peninsula during the Bronze Age, in connection with the field research of Miletus and Iasos. Numerous Minoan artefacts and characteristic features suggest a close connection between the Carian coast, Crete and the Cyclades. As a whole, these areas form a trading and communication network. The research is conducted in close cooperation with an international multi-disciplinary network including the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) as well as several Greek and Turkish colleagues.
On these grounds, it has been possible to inventory and identify a great deal of the pottery. Some characteristic architectural features were distinguished on the island.
Architecture shall help answering many questions concerning the identification and the identity of inhabitants. Architecture is a dynamic element that allows conclusions about its inhabitants and builders as well as their social, commercial, cultural and ethnic background. For this purpose, the shape and size of buildings as well as their floor plans, the settlement pattern and the topographical situation need to be taken into consideration.
These results need to be scrutinized and contrasted with prevailing theories such as Minoanization, Minoan Thalassocrassy, colonization of three types – settlement, governed and community colony –, Versailles Effect, imperialism and Minoan koine.
The field research of Tavşan Adası aims to contribute to the research on Minoanization and the identity of the people on the west coast of Asia Minor. Additionally, it will give an insight into the life of the settlement of Tavşan Adası as well as into its structure on the basis of the phases TA 4 (Late Middle-/Early Late Bronze Age) and TA 3 (Middle Bronze Age). This focus has never been directed on any harbour or trading post of the East Aegean.